Often, there are questions from individuals, usually new players, asking aboutprogression betting systems. Sometimes, we’ll see a post from someone who says,“Hey everybody! I’ve just discovered this great new system where you double your betafter every loss until you win. You can’t lose!”
Instead of using a progression system, you may as well run around in circles, yelling, “Iwish I had money, I wish I had money.” A progression system is equally ineffective in winning money in the long run.
“UP AS YOU LOSE” SYSTEMS
Martingale: This is the most infamous of these types of systems and they all bear some relationship to it. The premise is simple: you double your bet after each loss until you win, then you start over. A common series would look like this: 1 unit, lose, bet two units, lose, bet four units, lose, bet eight units and so on. If you win, you are one unit ahead for your series and you begin again. The problems with this system should be obvious to anyone. Long losing streaks are not uncommon in blackjack, and when you encounter one (and you will, and it will be just long enough to break you), you will lose everything you have gained. A ten-hand losing streak would have your final bet at $2560 if you started with a $5 bet. If you lost it, you would have lost a total of $5115. If you won it, you would have gained $5. You can expect to see about 3 of those losing streaks in every ten hours of play (figuring in pushes, and assuming 100 hands per hour).
D’Alembert: In this system, you raise your bet one unit if you lose and lower it one unit if you win, which means your winning bets will be higher than your losing bets. It would look like this in practice: 1, lose and go to 2, lose and go to 3, win and drop to 2, lose and go to 3, lose again, bet 4, win, bet 3 ad infinitum. It looks attractive, but the end result is the same: you will eventually lose all of your money. A ten loss series would have you down 55 units and you would have a hard time getting out of that hole.
Fibonacci: This system is a little more sophisticated, but the results can be as devastating as our old friend Martingale. It is a series of numbers, each of which is the sum of the last two numbers in the system, like this: 1-1-2-3-5-8-13-21-34-55-89-144. Advice about betting it varies, but one of the more common is to bet the series as you lose. If you win a bet, fall back one in the series. If you win that one, start over. If you lose, continue on in the series.
